L.A. Guns - Tracii Guns
By: Lori Smerilson Carson
Having started his career young, basically becoming an entrepreneur, Guitarist/Songwriter Tracii Guns has devoted his life to music which had led him to make a definite mark in the music industry. He founded his band L.A. Guns in the 1980s, and by 1988 they released their self-titled debut album which achieved Gold status and then continued success with several hits throughout the years. Now, these extraordinarily talented rock musicians are celebrating their fortieth anniversary and releasing their fifteenth Studio album LEOPARD SKIN, which displays a variety of amazing music that only L.A. Guns can create. Guns, along with his bandmates Lead Vocalist Phil Lewis, Guitarist Ace Von Johnson, Bassist Johnny Martin and Drummer Shawn Duncan will be taking their new hits as well as fans favorites on tour. Florida fans have the opportunity to see their new show on May 9th at Buddha Live in Fort Myers, on May 10th at The Casino’s Stage 954 at Dania Beach Entertainment Center in Dania Beach, on May 11th at Mount Dora Music Hall in Mount Dora, and on May 13th at Central Park Performing Arts Center in Largo.
Catching up with Guns just prior to the release of LEOPARD SKIN and their U.S. tour, he revealed some details about the new album and show, as well as a bit about his past, and what fans can look forward to.
SFL Music Magazine: You’re celebrating forty years with L.A. Guns. Your fifteenth studio album just came out April 4th titled LEOPARD SKIN. What would you say inspired this album?
Tracii Guns: Every time I go into a new writing kind of phase it’s like I don’t really know what I’m doing, and it’s like a brand-new thing. I guess if you were a baker, you would have a recipe that you use that’s everybody’s favorite recipe if you’re trying to sell something, but it’s not really like that for me writing music and having to put a whole album together. So, I kind of think about what the last record is, what’s the last thing I put out and what do I love about the last thing I put out, what am I listening to personally. Things like that because when I put a record together, I’m really doing it for myself and the band. So, that’s what I have in mind is what does the band love? You know, the other members. What do I love? What am I missing from my own record collection that I want to hear? In this case with this record it was, I haven’t just heard a great old-fashioned rock and roll record in a long time. Something that was new. Something that was more upbeat and fun and not too many suicidal lyrics (he laughed). Everybody’s kind of so dark at the moment in the last few years for obvious reasons. So, I went that direction. I was listening to a lot of early ‘70s kind of classic rock stuff like the James Gang with Joe Walsh. Stuff like that, and kind of all the way through the late ‘70s, all the way up through disco. So much great music and that’s the music that I really grew up on. So, all those kinds of influences creep into your database of things to draw from, and feelings and emotions, and then things start coming out, and that’s how this record worked. Once I got started, things started coming really quickly because one idea leads to another idea, leads to another idea, and it’s really a fun process for me.
SFL Music Magazine: I could hear that influence in songs like “If You Wanna” and “Hit And Run”. The song “Runaway Train” was really cool. It reminded me a little of The Monkees style.
Guns: Sure, yeah. In all of the interviews so far, that’s the standout track. That’s the song that everybody’s like whoa, where did that come from kind of thing. What it is, there’s a T.V. show called Reacher and the main character, he’s obsessed with the blues and there’s a reoccurring song by an artist named Blind Blake. He was such an innovator of the blues back way before my time. So, I kind of went down a YouTube rabbit hole of Blind Blake and I found one of his special tunings, and I just messed around with that tuning and I came up with the song.
SFL Music Magazine. Wow, that’s a great idea!
Guns: Yeah, fun stuff.
SFL Music Magazine: There is some slide guitar on “The Grinder” and on “Don’t Gimme Away” as well?
Guns: Yeah, there’s definitely old school stuff all over the album like that. Slide and clear guitar sounds, fuzzier guitar sounds, and like you were talking about “Hit and Run”, that’s really got like a surf kind of sound to it. This album is really, really fun, and people are responding like whoa, didn’t expect this!
SFL Music Magazine: It’s an awesome record! What would you say inspired “Lucky Motherfucker”? I love the harmonies and the strong vocals. Phil isn’t aging. His voice still sounds amazing!
Guns: It’s crazy!
SFL Music Magazine: It is. You keep getting more creative with your guitar riffs and solos. A little bit more bluesy too. What would you say inspired that song?
Guns: “Lucky Motherfucker” came out during a week when I was listening to the Beastie Boys kind of looking for some inspiration. When you have a play list like Spotify or something like that, it leads you down other paths once you’re done listening to whatever it is you searched for. Then that turned into a lot of like Sly and the Family Stone and Funkadelic and Parliament, stuff like that. I was like, ah man, L.A. Guns, we haven’t really had a funky, funky, funky song since “Dirty Luv” on our third record. I’m like ok, let me see what I can come up with, and kind of put that riff together with that beat. I think what I did was, I told Adam Hamilton, that’s our studio drummer. I said, hey man. I need a really funky beat. I want to kind of try something, and he just recorded a full drum track. Like four and a half minutes of drums and sent it to me, and I just started jamming over it. Then when I got an arrangement and I sent it back to him and he redid the drums he’s like, “holy fuck! What’s this?” I’m like, I don’t know (he laughed), but it sounds really cool. Then we got of course, the very funny lyrics, and that’s our next video and single. That comes out on March 6th, and I just saw the video. It’s the best L.A. Guns video we’ve ever done! It’s really cool.
SFL Music Magazine: I was going to ask about any new videos because you have “Taste It” out now. I have to ask, what were those pink drinks you all drank?
Guns: Oh, that’s Pepto Bismol. The great fixer!
SFL Music Magazine: What inspired that one?
Guns: “Taste It” and “Lucky Motherfucker” is, from a video perspective, it’s like a little concept, right? Like “Taste It” is part one and “Lucky Motherfucker” is part two. So, it’s about this guy that wins the only ticket to see us play and that’s the “Taste It” video, and then he wins a day out with the band, and that’s “Lucky Motherfucker”. Then we take him to all the cool spots in L.A. It’s just really funny and it’s non-stop, and Mark, the actor, is such a good sport. He was up for anything. He’s a real big eighties rock fan, so he was telling us stories. He was more fascinating than we were. It kind of shows in these videos that he’s a really high energy guy.
SFL Music Magazine: “The Masquerade” was a little more mellow. It sounds like you have an acoustic guitar in that one. What inspired that song?
Guns: Well, that’s a typical L.A. Guns suicide song (he laughed). We’re getting really good at those. It just really goes back to those kinds of, I don’t really want to call them ballads, but those slow songs from the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. Like “Angie” for example, by The (Rolling) Stones. That kind of feel. “Hey, Hey What Can I Do” by (Led) Zeppelin. It kind of fits in that category, if I’ve got to categorize something. The interesting thing for me on that song is that I played Thunder Roads piano which is that really kind of bell like thing in the background. Then I double tracked all the electric guitars. It has kind of a George Harrison feel. So, that song in itself was a project. It was like, hmm. I want to write something like this, and I want it to be really sad and miserable, and personal and intimate. So, that’s where that comes from.
SFL Music Magazine: What would you say inspires you in general when you write?
Guns: I play a lot when I’m not writing. I fuck around with guitar equipment constantly, and other instruments too. Mostly odd electronic instruments and weird keyboards and stuff. So, for me it’s almost half the playability and half the sounds. Sounds have a huge impact on human emotions. So, when it comes to writing, it’s really an under-pressure thing. It’s like I know that we have a deadline to turn in a record and that’s usually about a three-to-four-month period. So, when it’s getting close to that, like ninety days out, that’s when I really hustle and that’s when my brain starts going into gear because it has the muscle memory of doing it so many times. You know what I mean? Once I get into that mode which takes a couple days, it’s like, I don’t know what I’m doing. What the hell? How do you write a song? It’s always brand new to me, but once I get in the flow after a couple days, then one thing leads to another. I’ll get a sound on something, and then that sound that I get will turn into a completely different song, like next. Like I’ll be working on one song, and I’ll dial some sound in, and I’ll be oh that’s really good, but not for what I’m doing right now. So, those things just kind of stockpile, and when I get in a rut for example let’s say, I’m five songs in, I’m like, oh my God, I have to write six more songs. Where does this come from? Well then at that point, then I’ll put on a bunch of records. I’ll go through my record collection, and I’ll put on like Rufus and Chaka Khan or (The) Raconteurs or something like Humble Pie or the Scorpions. It doesn’t matter what it is, but as soon as I shift gears by listening to something, then other ideas start flowing out because usually it’s a melodic thing. All musicians have the tendency to get in their own habits of their favorite melodies and their favorite riffs and things like that, and that’s why the really, really big rock bands, they stick to their defined sound. Like their comfort zone where the band sounds like the band, but for us and for me, I can’t stick to one sound. It gets boring and I feel like I would feel guilty like oh, I’m just doing the same thing over and over again. Even though the fans might really love that sound and want that sound, I have to please myself first. I have to feel good about what I’m doing, and I have to be proud of what I’m doing. So, yeah, I get in these little ruts during the process, but I learn by maybe opening up an old Mel Bay guitar lessons book or something and learning something really quick. That can completely shift my brain into a different creative direction.
SFL Music Magazine: In the ‘80s when I last interviewed you on the “Electric Gypsy” set, I believe you told me how you started paying at age nine, your cousin’s guitar at your grandmother’s house? What would you say attracted you to the guitar?
Guns: So, you almost remembered the story right. I was five years old, almost six, and it was my uncle in the house that I live in now. This was my grandparents’ house. My dad grew up here, my aunt, my uncle, so this is kind of the central location for everything in my life starting at birth. So, my uncle Ron, he was studying to become a mechanical engineer and let’s see, he is thirteen years older than me, so he was just getting into college. He was studying hard, and I would hang out in his room, and he had a mid-sixties Harmony solid body guitar and a mid-sixties Fender amp. I would listen to him play, and then one day I was in there just blabbing away while he was trying to study and he put on “Pinball Wizard” by The Who. I think I said, wow, is that the guitar? He said, “yeah, that’s the guitar.” And he put that little Harmony guitar on me, and he showed me how to play the intro through the amp, and that was it! That was like whoa! Because for me the guitar is really an extension of my personality. So, no matter what my words are, the guitar is really showing how I feel at any given time. It’s really a great way to let out hidden feelings and hidden emotions. So, he’d be studying, and then a few days later, all I was doing was playing this (he sang) dang da dang da dang, dang, dang, dang, a dang a dang while he was studying. I’d be playing that for hours. He said, “You know what? I’m going to give you that guitar and amp and lets bring it in your room and then you can do whatever you want.” Then, that was it! I brought it in my room. I had my guitar and amp, and we still have that guitar, my uncle and I.
SFL Music Magazine: That’s really nice and I’m glad you straightened out the details!
Guns: Yeah, don’t worry. That was a long time ago.
SFL Music Magazine: L.A. Guns is forty years old. At that time in the late ‘80s, you said you just wanted to have a band to jam around with.
Guns: Yep.
SFL Music Magazine: You grew up with Slash and you played the Hollywood clubs. What would you advise a new artist to have the success and longevity that you have, that L.A. Guns has had?
Guns: Well, there’s no formula for success in the music business or in any arts-based business. So, the real key to making forward progress is you have to love what you’re doing enough to do it at a level where you’re pushing yourself to do what you love the most about playing an instrument or being in a band. A lot of people, where they fall short is, they write a song, they write a bunch of songs, and they kind of lie to themselves. They think wow, my songs are so good because they did it, instead of taking a step back and saying, wow, would I really go buy this song? Is it really that good or is it just that I made it and so I think it’s good. But if you’re expecting to make a living out of playing music like in a band way, that expectation is going to let you down nearly ten out of ten times. So, the thing is, you really have to love it, and you have to be willing to be authentic and be yourself, and push yourself beyond your comfort zone when you’re writing and when you’re playing, so you can stick out among the crowd, right? That’s the key to success in any business, and when you’re talking about being a musician as a career, then it turns into a business. So, if you’re going to try and sell yourself, you better be great because if not, the disappointment is going to happen over and over again. Even when you are your best and you’re great and you’re authentic and you really know that you’re doing the right thing, there is no guarantees of anything. So, the best thing you can do is love your music. Love your craft, love the art, love being in a band, and that should be your success. That should feel like your success. On the other hand, the first money that I made playing the guitar was in my mid-teens. I started getting hired to record on other people’s recordings, but that’s because I lived in L.A. In L.A. at that time, which was really around ‘79, ‘80, ‘81 when I was still in high school and then a couple years after high school where I knew various people, and those people knew that I could play anything they asked me to play. So, I was lucky. I was really lucky I got those gigs. At that time, my dad owned a plumbing shop and he was doing real well, and my mom was a waitress making tips and keeping us alive. When I would do sessions, I would make like two hundred bucks a day which I just lied to everybody. Oh no, I just do it ‘cause it’s fun and stuff like that because (he laughed) I looked at it like, hey, how can you be making that kind of money at sixteen years old? It’s just the way it was. I was always in fear that someone would take my money, so I just started buying guitar equipment. That’s what I did with my money when I was younger. That’s how I got my first Marshall and my pedals and stuff like that. So, learning to read music kind of puts setting yourself up to be like, not necessarily a studio musician, but definitely a musician for hire. The more knowledge you have of the instrument, you can definitely make money especially with apps and websites now that are looking to hire musicians, and it’s not union based so you’re going to get a cut rate, but you can make money playing the guitar.
SFL Music Magazine: That is good advice. You also previously mentioned you used to surf?
Guns: Yeah, I mean, I grew up in California. I had two groups of friends. I had my stoner, rock and roll, punk rock friends. Then I had my surfing buddies, but I was also into BMX before that. Me and my dad would go to the races twice a week for three years starting at nine years old until I was like twelve, and then I ditched the bicycle for skating. Skateboarding in pools and state parks, and surfing at the same time. So, yeah, I was a pretty normal California kid.
SFL Music Magazine: What can fans look forward to with the Florida shows?
Guns: If we’re playing there with Tom Keifer, that means we get a shorter set. If we’re headlining, we get a longer set, but L.A. Guns is the same as it’s always been. It’s high energy. Phil is at the top of his game. The whole band is at the top of their game. Add a couple new songs from the record. We try not to bore the audience by flooding it with long jams anymore, and too much new material. We do our best to stay in shape (he laughed). But I really think you’re going to get the type of rock and roll show that isn’t readily available anymore. It’s definitely, we come from a time, and we’re caught in a time warp, and we love it there.
SFL Music Magazine: Was there anything else new that people can look forward to?
Guns: We’re going to continue doing the same thing that we’ve been doing for the last seven years, and that’s heavy touring and putting out new music because that’s what a band is supposed to do, and we just do what we think we’re supposed to do.
